this. Not quite to the same extent perhaps as in Chaucer, but withal very noticeably to the ear, the lyrical note is frequently to be caught in Spenser, even where he is not obviously offering the reader Lyrical Poetry; as, for instance, in this stanza in the first canto of the Fairy Queen, beginning: [Pg 14] A little lowly hermitage it was, Down in a dale, hard by a forest’s side. This is not Lyrical Poetry proper, as now understood. But Spenser has left us in his Epithalamion a lyrical poem with which only one other English lyric can be placed in competition for the first place. It is too long for more than one brief excerpt to be cited here: Wake now, my love, awake! for it is time; The rosy Morne long since left Tithones bed, All ready to her silver coche to clyme; And Phœbus gins to shew his glorious hed. Hark! how the cheerefull birds do chaunt theyr laies And carroll of loves praise. The merry Larke hir mattins sings aloft; The Thrush replyes; the Mavis descant playes; The Ouzell shrills; the Ruddock warbles soft; So goodly all agree, with sweet consent, To this dayes meriment, Ah! my deere love, why doe ye sleepe thus long, When meeter were that ye should now awake, [Pg 15]T’ awayt the comming of your joyous make, And hearken to the birds love-learned song, The deawy leaves among? For they of joy and pleasance to you sing That all the woods them answer, and theyr eccho ring. [Pg 15] One is sorry to think that this long, lovely, and varied lyric is less known than it ought to be to the modern readers of Lyrical Poetry. I can only say to them, “Make haste to read it.” In Shakespeare’s plays the lyrical note is so often to be heard in the blank verse that the poet’s natural aptitude and inclination for singing were amply exercised there; and he gives most voice to it in such plays as As You Like It and Romeo and Juliet. But it recurs again and again throughout his dramas. Such lines as: All over-canopied with lush woodbine, How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank, Under the shade of melancholy boughs, are illustrations of what I am pointing out. Without dwelling on the excellent lyrics written in the reigns of Charles I. and Charles II., and confining ourselves to the di majores of poetry, we may pass on to Milton, whose Allegro and Penseroso as likewise the lyrics in
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